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Achaemenid Royal Inscriptions: DSe |
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| In ca.521, the Persian king Darius I the Great ordered that a new alphabet, the Aryan script, was to be developed. This was used for a small corpus of inscriptions, known as the Achaemenid Royal Inscriptions. An overview of all inscriptions can be found here. | ||
(British Museum, London) |
DSe, empire list from SusaThe following text, which contains a useful list of satrapies, was written in three languages and is known from eleven Old Persian, five Elamite, and three Babylonian fragments. One of these, a Babylonian stone tablet of 25 × 37 cm, is almost complete. They must have belonged to several copies, which included clay tablets and a small cask.
I am Darius, the great king, king of kings, king of all kinds of peoples of all kinds of origins, king of this earth far and wide, the son of Hystaspes, the Achaemenid, Persian, son of a Persian, an Aryan of Aryan descent. King Darius says: By the grace of Ahuramazda, these are the nations that I subdued outside Persia. I ruled them. They brought me tribute. What I ordered them, they did. They kept my law: the Mede, the Elamite, the Parthian, the Arian, the Bactrian, the Sogdian, the Chorasmian, the Drangian, the Arachosian, the Sattagydian, the Macian, the Gandaran, the Indian, the Haoma-drinking Saca, the Saca with pointed caps, the Babylonian, the Syrian, the Arab, the Egyptian, the Armenian, the Cappadocian, the Lydian, the Greeks near and across the sea, the Thracian, the Libyan, the Kushite, the Carian. |
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King Darius says: By the grace of Ahuramazda, much constructions that had previously been put out of place, I put in place. In a town called [lacuna], the wall was fallen from age. Before this unrepaired wall I built another, [to serve] from that time into the future. King Darius says: May Ahuramazda and the gods protect me, my royal house, and what I wrote in this inscription. |
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